Dev Fund Proposal: 20% to a 2-of-3 multisig with community-involved governance

I have account the 2020 halving, becase the price of ZEC now is on the bottom. The average ZEC price is at least $200, based on historical prices. Have you are taking into account the price of ZEC?

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I have no problem with the dev-fund, but the proportion of the development fund must be reasonable, otherwise it will be very unfavorable to the holders of ZCash, miners and other members of the community, which will be a devastating blow to ZCash. So the proportion of this development fund must be taken out separately to discuss exactly how much is appropriate.

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That would allow any single party to hold the others to ransom, not good.

More multisig parties makes it harder to reach agreement, there’s a point when that becomes impractical (more time spent talking about doing stuff than actually doing it).

Somewhere there’s a balance, I’m sure we’ll be exploring that as this process continues.

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Same would hold true with 2-of-2, and all all other combinations as in a bad scenario always the one entity that is the important factor in a draw position gets that power automaticly.

Compared to 2-of-3 i see 3-of-3 more secure and more based on absolute consensus. The main reasoning would be that it’s more easy to influence/corrupt only one entity than two. And of course in a bad scenario in a 2-of-3 one entity comes abosolutly redundant if two of them agree to agree on everything they want.

For example ZF and 3rd community entity make an agreement this would leave the ECC without any influence and decision forever. I personally indeed think it’s better to have a 3-of-3 here where each entity is granted to have influence over the whole time of being.

I see your point, but there’s a worse scenario where one party says ‘I will veto everything unless you do what I want’. That’s too much power.

N-1 multisig prevents that but there are also other things to consider - daira’s comment is interesting.

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In fantasy football, collusion happens when two or more players shift unbalanced resources to one team who wins the league. To avoid collusion happening, members of the league are given a chance to vote on transactions. If enough veto votes, the transaction is denied. Perhaps add a voting measure on budgets that pass the 2-of-3 multisig?

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Think we have to account for the influence ‘radical transparency’ and polling methods would have on how the multisig works. Its hard for corrupt things to happen when the process is public, all parties would have to keep it secret and hide information that has to be published.

I really like this proposal, its going to get even better once our deep-thinkers start working on it.

Edit: Banks have a ‘compliance’ function & their only role is to ensure all rules are followed - that could be an interesting multisig entity. They veto anything they consider ‘smelly’.

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Thanks everyone for providing your thoughts on this. I certainly acknowledge and share many of the concerns that have been raised. Instead of replying to each one individually, let me provide some general reflections and clarifications.

First, the primary purpose of the Third Party is to empower Zcash community members who are not part of the ECC or the ZF. I doubt anyone here is fundamentally against that.

Second, I acknowledge the problem of collusion. But it exists regardless of whether the decision mechanism is based on 2-of-2, 2-of-3, or 3-of-3. As far as I can tell, the middle option is the only one in which each of the three entities is forced to consider the possibility of not getting what they want, even if they threaten to disapprove the other’s request unless their own requests are approved. I’d be interested to hear whether people consider this feature desirable or not and why.

And third, I find it a bit worrying that unfair collusion is what people seem to expect will happen. Does this mean there is mutual distrust between the ECC, the ZF, and the broader community? Are we to assume that everyone involved, if presented with the opportunity, will prefer personal financial gain to doing what they think is actually fair and best for Zcash? If so, each party should feel perfectly comfortable approaching another with “an offer”, right? But note that, in a 2-of-3 situation, such a move carries a lot of risk because it could end that entity’s chances of getting funded, forever.

Am I being too naive here by expecting honesty from everyone involved, or at least from the majority of decision-makers in each of the three entities? Should I instead suspect conspiracy and deceit? If so, this proposal may indeed be fundamentally lacking.

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We just like to think of ‘worse cases’ and find unbreakable solutions - its what we do :slight_smile:

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I really encourage you do discuss how the 20% were determined and support it by data.
That’s what everything else relies on, it’s a central point in every funding discussion.
Otherwise it will open doors for all kind of speculations which will last for a long time.

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Thanks,You’ve got the point.

Does this help?

It covers various outcomes scenarios’ and there is a link to a spreadsheet you can play with to see the different outcomes.

Well worth watching the stream and looking at the spreadsheet.

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I’m aware of it, that’s not my point.

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For the majority of those 3 years, ECC has not been able to sell ZEC at $200 or higher. But even if it had, the $250m figure is just plain wrong. In fact it would be an order of magnitude too high, still, under the $200 assumption.

As a moderator, I’m not going to let us argue this issue based on blatant falsehoods. Differing opinions are fine; clearly incorrect facts are not.

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You proposed a Third Party that we know nothing about, and therefore have no reason, a priori, to trust. Its intended purpose may be “to empower Zcash community members who are not part of the ECC or the ZF”, but without knowing who’s actually going to be involved, we certainly should be skeptical.

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Here’s a direct link to the spreadsheet: https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=473062B43FF0AD33!32468&ithint=file%2Cxlsx&authkey=!AEeuditzOq07uq4

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Just made out of curiousity an average ZEC price calculation until today, average monthly ZEC price is around $165. Not that it helps much for future but it proofs that your statement is correct that in average ZEC was below $200.

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Human beings are exceptionally good at convincing themselves that acting in their self interest happens to be the honest thing. Organizations, doubly so. This is why incentive design is so important.

Personally, I have the highest opinion of the integrity of ECC and Zfnd’s current management. They have proven themselves honest and worthy custodians of the funds under the existing incentives structure. And yet, I would not want to put any custodian of Dev Funds in a position where the continuation of their work and the survival of their organization depends on how well they fight for a cut of the Dev Fund in a zero-sum game, under a new system that creates easy ways to win that game by consuming reserves and by lobbying a Third Entity which, even if perfectly honest, may have a hard time keeping up with the situation.

As for the Third Party, as @daira said, it is hard to judge its honesty when we have no idea who will serve. I expect that finding these perfectly honest and capable people wil not be an easy panacea, but rather yet another governance-debate-within-a-governance-debate that will occupy us for more weeks.

Moreover, the funding decisions, which the Third Entity will be effectively entrusted with, can be very nuanced and depends on technical details, assessment of ecosystem needs, resource estimations, etc. For example, we’ve seen how difficult this is with the Zcash Foundation Grants, where prudently allocating even a much smaller grant amount required many days of work by many experts – and in retrospect we still made some mistakes. So realistically, I’m apprehensive about the ability to find a Third Entity which has even more expertise and even more time to dedicate. And I worry that even a perfectly-honest-but-imperfectly-informed Third Entity would be easily confused by a perfectly-honest-but-self-focused party requesting funding.

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think i like the idea of 3 separate, but equal entities. i don’t think the 3rd entity should handle any money though.

ECC - executive
ZF - judicial
3rd entity - congress

guess a 3rd entity could also be an unnecessary bureaucracy.

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Maybe one entity should be completely disconnected from crypto stuff & independant.

Perhaps a legal firm on retainer charged with making sure everything is done correctly?

Edit: By everything I mean ‘whatever is decided plus legal obligations’ - so info released as tranparency, results of votes, bylaws, etc.

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